Learning more from a Business Degree than what you Learn at Business School

Going in into business school, you want to know what kinds of choices you have open to you when you come out the other end. Certainly, you could start a business yourself, or join the ranks of the managers in an established business. But what specifically is that that's open to you when you take up a business degree? Let's look a little deeper into the matter.

One of the first things you can do coming out of business school is signing up as an intern at a business that does management consulting. A training program here can be a sort of extension to your business school education. When you are around management professionals plying their trade in a way you can learn from, it'll help you understand everything that you ever read pursuing your degree and learn how to put it into practice. Of course as an intern with a consulting company, you aren't likely to make that much. But the boot camp training that you receive here is going to be very useful the next time you look for a job.

Taking up a job in an administrative position is likely to add valuable experience to that business degree you hold too. Any kind of administrative work will do - work as a customer rep, as a program coordinator, as a materials supervisor - anything like this is likely to look great on your resume. These don't promise you any shortcuts to the top; they can help you build your resume as you go along, and that is what you need to do at this stage.

It's a given when you think of a career with a business degree in mind that at one time or another, you really could go into in sales to try to better understand the dynamics of selling. This is an option early in your career that could help you understand communication skills, understand how to get close to a product, and learn how to drive yourself. With sales experience on your resume, you could get very far in almost any area of management. And finally, starting your own business is about the best way to prove to anyone that you've learned your lessons well in business school. You get experience in every part of running a business, and it gives you a kind of insight into a new job that you find nowhere else.

The upshot of it all is that you need to supplement your business degree with something that makes you stand out. It's just what the economy dictates today.